Cybersecurity expert offers tips to avoid zoombombing after Richmond International Women’s Day event hijacked

RICHMOND (NEWS 1130) — After a Richmond women’s organization was zoombombed with sexist, racist, and pornographic messages, a cybersecurity expert is warning the public about how to keep online meetings safe.

RELATED: Richmond group’s International Women’s Day event zoombombed with pornography

Dominic Vogel, cybersecurity expert, says from his experience, zoombombings are becoming less common as people add additional security features, but it comes down to awareness.

“In early days of the pandemic when businesses were scrambling and trying to figure out how to use zoom, it was more common.”

Vogel suggests having a password for the Zoom meeting and using the waiting room feature are two effective features to add a level of level protection to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the meeting.

Unfortunately, if meetings are related to certain topics, he says they may be more of a hotspot target.

“There are so many who don’t view equality and rights and gender equality as being an important thing. People who are doing those attacks are doing so because they’re doing that based on ideology, however sick and twisted it can be,” Vogel explains. “And these people could be anywhere in the world, and that’s what makes it so hard to attribute a crime to them. And often there’s not much law enforcement can do.”

And Richmond City Councillor Alexa Loo, one of the participants involved in Saturday’s zoombombing, is describing the incident as both troubling and beyond logic.

To the misogynist INCEL who thought it would be funny to hack our IWD2021 Zoom event: It wasn’t funny. Thank you for highlighting the importance of the work done by the Women’s Resource Centre. We need to lift each other up to make our world better.

— Alexa Loo 盧仙泳 (@alexaloo) March 6, 2021

“There is that fear component of how did this person get here? How are they in here? What else are they capable of doing?” she asks. “We’re seeing a lot more bullying and harassment online. People are already angry about the COVID, they’re stressed about it, and they’re just ready to lash out online at people for the strangest things, and it’s like we’re somehow losing our humanity to our online presence.”

Vogel adds the board of directors is generally older women who don’t have the most experience with the new work-from-home technology making the person who took the time to hijack the event disappointing.

“I think many of us feel more vulnerable when we don’t have those support systems in place, and you have an organization that’s trying to help people get those systems in place, and then they’re being attacked from the outside. I think it really creates fear and misunderstanding.

But at the end of the day, she says she is impressed and with the way the hosts of the event handled the zoombomb, saying “women often do right, we get together we get things done. And that this was just another example of that.”

The Richmond Women’s Resource Centre was targeted, during their annual International Women’s Day event, the group’s largest annual fundraiser.

President of the centre told NEWS 1130 Saturday it all happened during the keynote speech and the ordeal dragged on for nearly ten minutes.

As it stands — zoombombing is considered a crime in the U.S. and users in Canada have been arrested for participating in this behaviour.